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Multi-campus public higher education governance systems exist in 44 of the 50 U.S. states. They include all the largest and most influential public colleges and universities in the United States, educating fully 75 percent of the nation's public sector students. Their impact is enormous. And yet, they are largely neglected and as a tool for improvement are underutilized. Meanwhile, many states continue to struggle achieving their goals for higher education attainment, social and economic mobility, workforce development, equitable access and affordability, technological innovation, and human and environmental health. The dearth of scholarly research on these systems and their more effective use is explored in a forthcoming volume edited by the author. This paper extracts from that volume a set of specific ways in which systems can leverage their unique ability to use scale in service to their mission.

Academic freedom is a fundamental concept that exists to ensure that institutions of higher education function for the public good and that colleges are constructed on the foundations of genuine trust. For over a century, members of The American Association of University Professors (AAUP) have been agile guardians, careful stewards, and erudite experts regarding the principle of academic freedom and its application in the faculty profession. The Academic Senate for California Community Colleges began a deep and sustained conversation on academic freedom. California community colleges are in a period of significant and systemic change. Faculty are engaging with and challenging each other to act in adopting culturally responsive teaching, in eliminating racism in all its forms--interpersonal, institutional, systemic--and in serving the whole student in ways that provide care and support as well as ensure a clear and direct path toward reaching an educational goal. The purpose of this paper is not to be the definitive word on academic freedom in the community college system; rather, it is to begin an exploration of what academic freedom means and how it should be protected and implemented in California's community colleges. This paper strives to lay a foundation to ensure that the principles of academic freedom remain strong and flexible to adapt to the changing dynamics in the California community colleges and in academia.

In many school districts the policies that regulate personnel are governed by collective bargaining agreements (CBAs) negotiated between teachers' unions and school boards. While there is significant policy attention and, in some cases, legislative action that has affected the scope of these agreements, there is relatively little research that assesses how CBAs vary over time, or whether they change in response to states' legislative reforms. In this paper we compare CBAs in three states at two points in time: before and after substantial reforms in Michigan and Washington impacting collective bargaining and in California where there were no major statutory changes affecting CBAs. We find that few district characteristics predict changes in CBA restrictiveness over time, other than institutional spillovers from local bargaining structures. However, we observe that reforms to the scope of bargaining in Michigan and Washington drastically reduced the restrictiveness of Michigan and Washington CBAs relative to California.

This paper studies teacher attrition in Wisconsin following Act 10, a policy change which severely weakened teachers' unions and capped wage growth for teachers. I document a sharp increase in turnover after the Act was passed, driven almost entirely by the exit of older teachers, who faced strong incentives to retire before the end of pre-existing collective bargaining agreements. I find that student academic performance increased in grades with teachers who retired following the reform, and I obtain similar results when instrumenting for retirement using the pre-existing age distribution of teachers. Differences in value-added between retirees and their replacements can potentially explain some, but not all, of the observed academic improvements.

In this paper we consider more than three decades of research on teachers' unions in the United States. Focusing on unions' role in shaping education policy, we argue that collective bargaining and political organizing comprise the two central but distinct forms of influence at the district, state and national levels of decision-making. We note recent changes in state policy directly and indirectly affecting unions and union priorities. We argue that these changes may result in a variety of different conditions under which unions operate, and suggest that this variation represents fertile ground for new empirical analyses of union influence. Such work may in turn require a reconsideration of the extent of, and limitations to union power in altered educational landscapes.

Stories abound about the staffing cuts that will have to be made currently, and in the next couple of years, as the ripple effects of the economic crisis impact local and state education budgets. Major budget cuts make teacher layoffs a near inevitability. This raises two very timely questions: what now determines which teachers are laid off, and is that policy best for students? A significant body of empirical research shows that the specific teachers to which students are assigned can have dramatic effects on their achievement. Research by economist Eric Hanushek (1992), for instance, estimates that the difference between having a very effective versus a very ineffective teacher can be as much as a full year's learning growth. So are the significant differences in teacher effectiveness part of the equation when making tough decisions about which teachers will lose their jobs? The research described in this paper suggests that the answer to this question is a definitive "no." Empirical analysis reflects what is hard-wired into collective bargaining agreements (CBAs): seniority is the most important factor when deciding which teachers are laid off. Not only does this seniority-driven system not consider teacher effectiveness, but it also results in substantially more teachers being laid off to achieve specific budget targets because senior teachers, whose jobs are protected, earn more than novice teachers. This research also tellingly finds that the novice teachers laid off are often more effective than the senior teachers left behind. Looking at Washington state data on teacher effectiveness and teacher layoffs, this research finds that current layoff policy could lead to students losing 2 to 4 months of learning in the year after the layoffs. (Contains 2 tables, 4 figures and 33 endnotes.)

With 13.9 million members, labor unions represent more working families than any other organization in the United States. Although meeting the child care challenge is not as high a priority in some quarters of the labor movement as in others, it is still a major concern. Since the advent of new leadership in the labor movement in the mid-1990s, new union initiatives are under way to expand the quality, affordability, and availability of child care services; to increase the compensation and dignity of child care workers; and to increase parents' ability to care directly for their children. In addition to such benefits in and of themselves, union efforts on their behalf also advance labor's organizing and collective bargaining activities. During interviews, several prominent labor leaders expressed support for an active union role in improved child care services and offered detailed plans for carrying out this policy. These plans fell into three models--bottom up, top down, and outside pressure. Useful strategies in all of these models included broadening the issue, promoting child care as a right, identifying champions, setting accomplishable goals, legitimating new ideas, increasing visibility, and building coalitions. The bulk of this report consists of detailed appendices covering workplace policies won through bargaining, bargaining strategies, New York and California coalitions, action plans, and catalytic agencies. (Contains 15 references and 43 notes.) (EV)

A study was done of salary determinants for academic librarians in light of the increasing trend to include academic and librarian faculty in joint bargaining units for compensation. The study analyzed position, gender, faculty status, rank, tenure, experience, and academic preparation as salary determinants for 469 librarians at 25 state colleges and univerisities. The main findings of the study were that higher librarian salaries were associated with completion of an advanced degree, attainment of an administrative position, and longer years of service. For librarians employed at university institutions, faculty status and rank were of more influence on salaries than for those working at the state colleges. Faculty librarians earned significantly less than academic faculty at the same rank. These findings prompted recommendations for benchmarking librarian salaries, and for treating most librarians as members of a single discipline. Included are 1 figure, 4 tables, and 21 references. (JB)

Employment legislation in the United Kingdom from before 1970 to the 1990s has changed and with it collective bargaining in higher education. Industrial relations before 1970 were treated as a voluntary activity virtually unregulated by law. Then the Remuneration of Teachers Act 1965 set up the Burnham Committees, which until 1987 were the forum for salary negotiations and associated matters. In the 1960s and 1970s the normal pattern of collective bargaining was that unions made demands and management resisted, trying to minimize the concession they needed to make. The Donovan Commission and the resulting Donovan Report (1968) led to a great deal of legislation between 1970 and 1978 aimed at encouraging better regulated collective bargaining at workplace level. Legislation from 1979 onwards was aimed at regulating the power of the trade unions and bringing about a shift in the balance of power between unions and employers. As a consequence employers are now likelier to take a tough line in their handling of disputes and resulting defeat for the unions. Whatever policies higher education adopts for labor relations, college industrial relations should be a priority concern for managers and governors in the run-up to incorporation. Relevant Acts of Parliament are listed. (JB)

Symbolic and cognitive organizational perspectives were used to analyze a case study of a complete academic bargaining cycle. The researcher, as participant-observer, had access to all bargaining sessions and to both union and administration caucuses. Although bargaining is often considered a rational process, this case illuminated the processes and outcomes of negotiation under conditions of loose coupling and bounded rationality. Negotiations showed the three major characteristics of organized anarchies, and had outcomes more symbolic than instrumental. People bargained to get what they wanted, but also bargained so that they wanted what they got; attitudes followed as well as preceded behavior, and although the bargaining was in part goal-directed, goals were also bargain-directed. Bargaining did not affect institutional operations, but it did help participants arrive at more consistent interpretations of institutional life. Includes 17 references. (Author/MSE)

Recent research (Strunk and Reardon forthcoming) applies Partial Independence Item Response (PIIR) models to teacher bargaining agreements in California to calculate the latent restrictiveness of these contracts. Further research (Strunk and Grissom 2010; Strunk forthcoming) tests the external validity of these estimates. Given that much research on collective bargaining focuses either on high-profile provisions (Moe 2009) or categories of provisions (Koski and Horng 2007), it is important also to assess the internal validity of these estimates: are PIIR estimates of contract restrictiveness robust to analyses on different subsets of provisions? We introduce a new dataset derived from "all" provisions in "all" active CBAs in the state of Washington, and apply the PIIR methodology to calculate estimates of contract restrictiveness using the full range of provisions and various subsets of provisions. We find that estimates calculated from a subset of high-profile provisions are moderately highly correlated with estimates calculated from the full range of provisions, as are estimates calculated from several categories of provisions: Association rights, evaluation procedures, teacher benefit and leave policies, hiring and transfer provisions, and teacher workload agreements. However, estimates calculated using only grievance and layoff policies produce different results, suggesting that estimates using these contract sub-sections may capture another dimension of bargaining and lead to inappropriate inferences on the relationship between union strength and outcomes of substantive interest. Protocol for collecting and coding collective bargaining agreements (CBAs) is appended. (Contains 5 tables and 19 footnotes.)

A large literature on teacher collective bargaining describes the potential influence of provisions in teacher union contracts, but little is known about the determinants of these provisions. Using a unique dataset of every active teacher collective bargaining agreement in Washington state, we find that the proximity of two districts is a significant predictor of the similarity between the districts' CBAs. This suggests that spatial relationships play a major role in determining the provisions that appear in a district's CBA. These spatial relationships are more pronounced for different subsets of provisions, including a subset of high-profile provisions and provisions dealing with Association rights, benefits and leave procedures, hiring and transfer policies, and teacher workload agreements. Our findings suggest that policy makers seeking to understand the determinants of teacher collective bargaining provisions must consider the role that spatial relationships play in the process. (Contains 6 tables and 29 footnotes.)

We investigate patterns of teacher mobility in districts with different collective bargaining agreement (CBA) transfer provisions. We use detailed teacher-level longitudinal data from Washington State to estimate the probability that teachers of varying experience and effectiveness levels transfer out of their schools to another school in the district, to another district, or out of Washington K-12 public schools. We find consistent evidence that within-district transfer probabilities increase with the proportion of disadvantaged students in a school for veteran teachers but decrease with the proportion of disadvantaged students for novice teachers, and that the strength of these relationships is associated with the strength of seniority transfer provisions in CBAs. Specifically, the pattern of veteran teachers leaving disadvantaged schools and novice teachers staying in disadvantaged schools is more pronounced in districts with strong CBA seniority transfer protections. CBA transfer provisions do not, however, appear to be an important factor in teacher transfers out of school districts or the K-12 public school workforce in Washington. Finally, we find some evidence that more effective teachers are more likely to stay in advantaged schools when seniority is not a factor in transfer decisions. A bibliography is included.

As 21st century school systems continue to emerge, low-income parents will continue to regard public charter schools as the means through which their children have equal access to quality education. This report is a response to the National Education Association's (NEA's) policy statement on charter schools. In the statement, the NEA calls for a moratorium on the creation and expansion of public charter schools. Herein, the authors state that NEA leaders fear that the growth of charter schools threatens the health--and wealth--of their union. The authors conclude that as 21st century school systems continue to emerge, low-income parents will continue to regard public charter schools as the means through which their children have equal access to quality education. It's time for the NEA and other teachers' unions to reconsider whether standing in the charter schoolhouse door and shouting "no" is the best way to serve America's children.

Teachers make a difference. Everyone--students, parents, teachers, principals and even casual observers--have always known this. But how much of a difference teachers make has only recently been estimated. Teachers are arguably the most important school factor affecting student achievement but, especially important for the purposes of this paper, the variation in impact across teachers is striking. The purpose of this paper is to examine the interplay between the emerging policy focus on teacher performance incentives and the response of teachers' unions. The authors focus first on the policy shift itself. Without an understanding of the nature of the teacher's job and its tradition, it is difficult to understand the tug-of-war both for and against performance incentives. They then examine the extent to which, and the ways in which, teachers unions are responding to demands for increased accountability and the possible consequences of this relationship for shaping policy and practice. (Contains 3 tables and 43 footnotes.)

This paper reviews evidence of the impact of individual merit pay systems for teachers on student achievement, presenting new empirical results from a system established within a collective bargaining environment. While many merit pay systems exist nationwide, very little empirical evidence concerning their influence on student achievement exists. A natural experiment arose in one county where a high school piloted a merit pay system that rewarded student retention and student evaluations of teachers while a comparable high school maintained a traditional compensation system. A difference-in-differences analysis indicated that merit pay: had no effect on grade point averages and daily attendance rates; reduced the percentage of students who dropped out of courses; and increased the percentage of students who failed. The outcomes illustrate the difficulty of instituting individual merit pay in schools. The goal was to increase student retention. Students were considered retained if they were present during a randomly selected day of the last week of classes. The system worked by this measure because the school experienced a significant reduction in course noncompleters. However, it was not clear whether this measure was correlated with student achievement or even average attendance (neither of which was improved). (Contains 13 references.) (Author/SM)

Paper I: Using information from the national 1973 Quality of Employment Survey, the following assertions are examined relative to white employees: (1) Employees with more years of schooling and experience can obtain more agreeable and better-paying jobs and (2) among workers with equal schooling and experience, those with more agreeable jobs must accept less pay. It was concluded that school and work experience both pay off in more dignified and meaningful work and that finding evidence of wage differentials which compensate for nonpecuniary benefits is very difficult. Paper II: A survey of unionized municipal workers was done to determine whether the new generation of educated workers would make new kinds of job demands. A questionnaire was mailed to 164 accountants, 214 college office assistants, and 427 social service supervisors and administered to 90 nurse's aides through interviews. It was found that the desire for changes in the job seems related to patterns of satisfaction and dissatisfaction with particular job aspects rather than to age or education. Paper III: Utilizing information from the same survey as Paper II, an analysis of responses suggests that union leaders do not initiate demands for job enrichment because they correctly perceive their members' relative unwillingness to forego pay increases in order to get more opportunity for job involvement. (EM)

The question of whether two-year colleges with and without faculty unions differ in terms of selected institutional characteristics was investigated. Attention was directed to expenditures spent on instruction, the percentage of revenue obtained from various sources, the educational costs per full-time equivalent student, the faculty-student ratio, and the average faculty salary. Data for the study were obtained from the 1979-1980 Higher Education General Information Survey. The study population was 319 public two-year colleges, 189 of which had faculty bargaining units and 130 of which did not have faculty bargaining. Findings include the following: both groups of institutions devoted the majority of expenditures to instructional costs; faculty at colleges with unions earned a higher average salary and taught fewer students than faculty in similar institutions without unions -- this resulted in a higher cost of instruction at colleges with unions; institutions with collective bargaining raised a greater percentage of their revenues from tuition and fees and state and local appropriations, while nonunion colleges received higher percentages from grants, gifts, contracts, and endowment income. (SW)

The impact of collective bargaining in selected areas of institutional decision making at Illinois community colleges was studied. The study institutions were public community colleges that had comprehensive academic programs and were campus-based. Questionnaire responses were received from 645 teaching faculty. Findings include the following: the areas in which faculty had the greatest impact on decision making dealt with the curriculum, degree requirements, grading system, and program admission requirements; while the areas where faculty perceived the least impact on institutional decision making included negotiating individual faculty salaries, dismissing faculty with cause, and selecting the top campus administrators. Comparisons were made of faculty views at unionized and nonunionized campuses, along with demographic and background characteristics of faculty at unionized/nonunionized institutions. It was found that in 19 of 20 areas, faculty at unionized colleges viewed that they had greater impact in institutional decision making than did faculty working at nonunionized colleges. In addition, faculty in unionized and in nonunionized colleges demonstrated similar demographic and background characteristics. Appendices include a bibliography and study data. (SW)

Assessments of organizational effectiveness in a sample of four-year institutions in 1976, 1980, and 1983 were used to investigate the potential causal directionality of unionism and organizational effectiveness. Nine dimensions of effectiveness were analyzed: student educational satisfaction, student academic development, student career development, student personal development, faculty and administrator employment satisfaction, professional development and quality of the faculty, system openness and community interaction, ability to acquire resources, and organizational health. In 1976, 41 institutions participated; in 1980, 20 of the same institutions participated; and in 1983, 26 of the institutions participated. Eighteen of the schools were common to all three studies. The number of respondents was 1,317 in 1976, 1,240 in 1980, and 246 in 1983. Respondents consisted of academic, financial, student affairs, and general administrators, faculty department heads, and trustees. The results of the analyses suggest that ineffectiveness leads to unionism, but that once unionized, organizational effectiveness does not seem to improve. (SW)

A salary study was conducted employing a national peer group because of the expiration of a faculty contract in 1987. The problem addressed was the way in which to produce this national peer group and the resulting salary database in such a fashion that it would be accepted and utilized by both faculty and administrators involved in the collective bargaining process. A national database was built in LOTUS 1-2-3 containing information on secondary enrollment, revenue, and other institutional characteristics. A joint faculty-administrative advisory committee eventually negotiated the selection of five key data elements. Institutions not possessing these characteristics were "deselected." The remaining 44 schools became the agreed-upon database for the national faculty salary survey. Appended are a number of tables summarizing the data analysis, the final selection criteria, the survey population, and a list of participating institutions. Contains 3 references. (Author/KM)

Various aspects of faculty workload are reviewed, with emphasis on definitions of workload and on major problems in developing workload formulas. Attention is also given to the erosion of parietal policies, the quality versus quantity issue, and the effect of collective bargaining on workloads. For most instructors, the important factors are the number of credit or contact hours assigned per week and the number of students in each class, with credit or contact hours having greater significance to the faculty. Although workload formulas have been developed, they still approximate the number of weekly contact hours. Hourly loads are lower today than they were in the 1950's and earlier. Faculties object strenuously to the practice of equating workload to quantitative criteria, particularly number of contact hours, student-faculty ratios, and average class size. Parietal regulations are still found in many statements of college policies, and are based on the principle that teaching is a full-time occupation. In light of the strong tradition equating low or moderate workloads with quality, administrators face a formidable task in their efforts to increase the loads. Within the limits set by state laws and state administrative regulations, faculty are participating in the initial determination and subsequent reappraisal of workloads, as recommended by the 1969 AAUP Statement of Faculty Workload. New teaching methods and technologies have made it necessary to modify the faculty load formulas. Faculty fear that the major purpose of introducing the new teaching/learning modes is to increase faculty productivity, which will, in turn, lead to the use of fewer instructors. (DB)

Summarized from a national study of part-time college faculty employment are the legal developments that affect the rights of part-time faculty. The part-timer has long been a marginal employee in academe, but recent developments in the law clarify the degree to which he holds some measure of job security, rights to equal pay, and the protections of collective bargaining and due process. The report's considerations are presented in four categories: the legal status of part-time faculty (property rights, state statutes, litigation in the states, and public school decisions); compensation (equal protection, the Peralta Federation case, the "substantial rationality" test, and statutory provisions); determining part-time faculty unit status in collective bargaining (early and recent National Labor Relations Board decisions, state labor board decisions, the University of Massachusetts and Los Rios decisions, separate bargaining units, and fair representation); and the law and institutional policy (the impact of court and labor board decisions on institutional policy, general implications for policymaking, and equity and policy considerations). (MSE)

Quebec colleges remained firmly entrenched in the pure classicism of prerevolutionary France until well into the twentieth century. Formal Roman Catholic Church control of Laval University, a Jesuit university, ceased in 1965 at a time when the institution and its administration were expanding greatly, and the faculty quickly began to resent the rule of bureaucrats over their affairs. Major changes had already been set in motion by the 1963 royal commission of inquiry into education in the province. Access to education was democratized, faculty was expanded, and budgetary economies and accountability were imposed. One result was the lowering of Laval's previously high faculty salaries. Unionization occurred, but in a haphazard fashion. There were several faculty concerns at Laval: the absence of collegial governance, the extremely precarious position of untenured faculty, and the lack of a fixed salary scale. A faculty union was established in early 1975 at Laval, but collective bargaining was slow, and a 108-day strike begain in September 1976. The sharing of power that the administration was willing to grant was minimal in real terms, even after the strike gained in intensity. A return-to-work agreement was signed on December 23, 1976, and the collective agreement was signed in January 1977. The contract runs until the end of May 1978, and represents a compromise on issues. A fixed salary schedule has been established, the faculty have been granted much greater job security, procedures for selection and hiring are spelled out in great detail, and the right of appeal of promotion and contract renewal decisions is specified. (MSE)

Research findings from a study of collective bargaining in New York and Michigan school districts indicate that collective bargaining does have a significant impact on the allocation of resources in ways that affect student learning. These findings support hypotheses based on the theory that collective bargaining will make a difference in resource allocation when the preferences of teachers and management do not coincide. The hypotheses state that, without collective bargaining, management responds to the preferences of marginal teachers (those mobile enough to quit if dissatisfied) because inframarginal teachers (those less mobile) pose less of a threat to district stability. Moreover, inframarginal preferences are more effectively represented when teachers are unionized, and strong unions can significantly alter the outcomes of contract negotiations, affecting teacher control over instructional spending. The research examines relationships among the following factors: union affiliation, district characteristics, kinds of contract provisions, and numbers of contract provisions. Special attention is paid to the impact of enrollment decline on union intersts in collective bargaining. The study found that the stronger the union, the more items covered in the contract, the more resources allocated to instruction, and the more control exercised by teachers in district decision-making. (Author/PGD)

The purposes of the Trust Agreement Project are to develop new forms of school organization and new patterns of relationships among teachers and school administrators, and to expand the range of labor-management discussions in education. Six California school districts participated in this experiment by selecting an area of educational policy in which each would attempt to craft a trust agreement. Lompoc, Poway, and Santa Cruz designated the area of peer assistance and review. Newport-Mesa chose staff development, and Petaluma selected the general area of staff evaluation. San Francisco chose to develop two trust agreements: a career development program for teachers' aides, and an elementary school level interdisciplinary literature-based reading program involving a single elementary school. Trust agreements developed have begun to alter the ways in which organizational decisions are made. Adversarial relationships have begun to give way to collaboration. Teachers are being included as partners in decisions about the structure and method of operation of school districts. The work of each trust agreement district is described. Subsequent sections of the report provide additional analysis of lessons learned this year and plans for the future. The appendix lists project participants by district. (15 references). (MLF)

An examination of the innovative compensation systems called gainsharing, profit-sharing, pay-for-knowledge, two-tier wage plans, and lump sum bonuses has the following public policy implications: (1) more research is needed to evaluate the private and public sectors' experience with those alternative systems; (2) gainsharing and profit-sharing bonuses should not be given tax advantages because that would actually undermine those compensation plans; (3) the Department of Labor should reexamine the Fair Labor Standards Act to make it less difficult for employers to provide equal-percent gain- and profit-sharing bonuses in order to foster an atmosphere of teamwork while still complying with the act; (4) federal and state mediators should be trained to discuss the innovative systems during collective bargaining; (5) the money available to support area-wide labor-management committees such as the Buffalo-Erie County Labor-Management Council should be enhanced so that they can provide a delivery system for information dissemination; and (6) the government and employers should recognize that, regardless of the competition that has required employers to be cost-conscious when approaching wage decisions, there is nothing particularly innovative about reducing employees' wages and, in turn, their standard of living. (60 references) (CML)

An examination of how employers and employees may be encouraged to adapt to changing economic conditions through innovation and cooperation rather than conflict indicates that the system of dispute resolution in the United States contains substantial disincentives to resolving disputes through negotiation and substantial incentives to resolving disputes through the exercise of legal rights. Because it operates on the basis of institutionalized conflict and adversarialism, the legal system must be reconsidered as the ultimate arbiter of such disputes. The premises of labor policy must also be changed. Government must state that negotiation, cooperation, and the private resolution of labor and employment disputes are the preferred methods of resolution and of adjusting to economic change. Among other changes, the National Labor Relations Act should be modified so that all employer decisions with a direct impact on employment would be subject to negotiation with the union; in situations where a facility must be closed and/or production shifted in order to remain competitive, the bargaining unit should be defined as the work done or products produced rather than as employees at a given location; and employers should be permitted to hire only temporary replacements for employees engaged in an economic strike. (27 references) (CML)